Christmas Island residents prepare to relive turmoil and horrors

The unprecedented wave of asylum boat arrivals between 2008 and 2013 is still fresh for Christmas Island residents.

Navy personnel search for survivors after an asylum-seeker boat crashed into Christmas Island in 2010. Picture: Amy Rossbach and Allan Krepp

An Australian Border Force patrol boat was a familiar sight when it appeared yesterday morning on the edge of Flying Fish Cove, the pretty harbour where 50,000 asylum-seekers took their first steps on Australian soil during the last Labor government.

ABF Dash 8 planes, formerly badged Coastwatch, will shortly resume patrolling the ocean north of Christmas Island for boats. What they find, or do not find, is likely to be the subject of fiery political debate in the lead-up to an election campaign set to be dominated by border protection and the rights of asylum-seekers.

The unprecedented wave of asylum boat arrivals between 2008 and 2013 is still fresh in the memories of Christmas Island residents.

There was resentment when bottled water and fresh produce were flown in for detainees, especially on those occasions when the ship that supplied locals was months late.

Some of the 1200 residents were just annoyed they had to share their pristine island with a similar number of contractors, service providers, police, guards, interpreters and public servants who were all well paid and pushed up the price of everything. The island’s sewerage system literally exploded onto the reef under the strain of too many people.

There was still goodwill from many residents, some of whom were allowed to host asylum-seekers at their homes for meals or collect them from detention and drive them around the island for excursions. But this became unmanageable as hundreds of detainees turned into thousands.

Anger about the big business of detention ran deep on matters big and small.

At one point, the commonwealth had to tell its interpreters not to pick fruit from the trees in residents’ gardens.

Then the sports club banned detainees from playing on its oval following a dispute with the commonwealth over the state the ­toilets were left in after each visit. Hundreds of children were ­consequently denied a place to run and play.

They could see the playground equipment and grass from their fenced compound.

By the time detainees rioted and staged a mass breakout in 2011, even the most tolerant residents were incensed.

Simon Prince, who claims his island dive tour business was destroyed when commonwealth contractors gobbled up the island’s accommodation for their detention centre workers, finds that ­period difficult to talk about.

Mostly, he struggles to discuss December 15, 2010, when an asylum boat broke up in conditions later described by a coroner as like a washing machine.

Mr Prince was among the residents who ran to the clifftop at Rocky Point and threw life jackets into the wind, only to have them fly back past them.

“It stuffed me up for a long time,” he said yesterday.

Tanja Schonewald has previously said she was neither surprised nor alarmed when she saw an asylum boat go past her clifftop home that morning. It was by then a daily occurrence, and those on board appeared to be calmly making their way to the cove.

But within minutes she heard screams and ran towards the commotion.

“I saw a baby die, such little feet sticking out of the water, the little hands the same size as my girl’s little hands,” she said in 2014.

“At some point you have to turn away, you can’t watch any more people die.”

One man leapt to safety and scrambled up the cliffs. Defence Force personnel in rigid inflatables saved 41 men, women and children. Fifty asylum-seekers died. In all, an estimated 1200 people died trying to get to Australia on asylum boats during the Rudd-Gillard governments.

We never saw it up close like that again. But it continued to happen out of sight, somewhere over the Java Trench and often as ADF officers scrambled to pluck people to safety. Baby Raha was saved on July 16, 2013.

Her mum was with her moments before their asylum boat capsized but could not be found after. She drowned.